Cloud Management

Unraveling your applications and servers to facilitate a migration of some or all of your IT infrastructure to the cloud can be difficult and time consuming.

Canux brings some of the same methodologies used to develop applications to the cloud migration process.

Locutus

For individuals or teams, Locutus is the fastest way to assign, delegate, and report on a task. Developed with the busy professional in mind, task ownership with Locutus is streamlined so that within a few taps, time is saved from endless emails and project status meetings.

Locutus is currently in development.More information on Locutus will be available soon. Please contact usdirectly with questions.

We will help you recognize your best strategy to build your company's future success.

Business Unit Management

Succession Planning

business performance improvement

Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: 'Are you ready?'

--Johnny Carson

Are your employees ready for success?

The primary function of a management consultant is to help an organization improve its performance through the analysis of existing problems and the development of plans for improvement. Oftentimes this is accomplished by placing the consultant in a management position, giving them the latitude to make process and/or organizational changes, and then identifying and training their successor.

It also happens that a well-run business unit in an organization has lost a key executive and needs temporary management help while a successor is found and trained.

In either of these cases the deliverable is the successful management of a business function and the proper transition of that function to a successor.

Services Delivered

Problem and function analysis and remediation plan development

Succession planning, recruiting and candidate selection

Job function and roles and responsibilities documentation

Development and optimization of teams such as:

IT Operations

Large cross-functional projects

Enterprise Architecture and Strategic Planning

Software, Hardware, or Services Development

Sales and Support

Value Proposition

A management consultant professional brings an outside objective perspective on the problems facing an organization that an internally-promoted resource may not. With a broad base of experience to draw from they are able to recommend and action changes that can make substantial improvements. Further, the management consultant can help find and train the right resource for a longer-term career in the company.

Is your business prepared to keep up with the changing business environment?

A capability analysis is designed to help a company that is struggling to optimize their internal processes in order to scale or be more competitive. Organizations naturally become “siloed” over time as business managers naturally prioritize the needs of their teams over the more holistic and strategic needs of the entire company. This manifests itself in a less efficient organization that struggles with new initiatives and growth.

This service identifies the existing capabilities and functionalities for the relevant organizational areas through a review of the interactions and engagement points of the different (cross-functional) groups. Contrasting the current state with industry Best Practices, a strategic plan is created to improve the business’ capability and maturity.

Services Delivered

Current State analysis of existing business activities

Systems review of interaction points of the business

Gap analysis; identification of improvement opportunities

Roadmap development and recommendations for business improvement

Return on Investment report development

Value Proposition

Understanding current capabilities and limitations contributes to long-term planning efforts to improve the business.

Understanding the value of and implementing industry best practices increases overall efficiency and reduces employee frustration.

Waste between departments and through processes is identified and a strategy developed to eliminate it. Employing the motto “As simple as possible, but not simpler” in conjunction with an understanding of the performance expectations established by the company’s executives results in a positive ROI and increased ability to scale.

Providing a future state mapping strategy enables the ability to measure the success of corporate and departmental improvement efforts.

Service Operation

Conduct interviews with stakeholder, business owners and subject matter experts to determine current state of business activity—tools and methods

Research current industry best practices

Identify functionality gaps

Development of a “suitability to task” roadmap that highlights current capability, future capability, and the steps required to make the transition

Development of a ROI report outlining the business value and costs associated with the changes

Your business processes are preventing you from reaching your corporate objectives.

Business processes tend to become more manual and less automated over time as new capability and requirements are added. Business unit owners and their teams do not typically have the cycles necessary to examine and refine them as they are being pressured to and are expending their efforts on execution.

This service examines a process or set of processes against the business requirements and performance expectations of the organization and creates a future state process map as well as a roadmap for execution and a plan for a system of continuous process improvement once the future state is achieved.

Services Delivered

Current state process mapping

FMEA process to identify and rate risks

Future state process development

Process rearchitecture roadmap and strategic plan

Engagement process and/or RACI mappings

Continuous process improvement strategy

Value Proposition

Business processes can be thought of a organizational resources, just like people. There is a direct correlation between the efficiency of the personnel in your organization and the processes they use to do their work.

Having a management consultant examine your business processes objectively allows you to align those processes with your expectations in terms of business requirements and performance objectives. In many cases identifying just a few key processes can have a dramatic effect on your organizations overall efficiency (Pareto Principle).

Service Operation

Interviews with process owners, users, and subject matter experts

Evaluation of any existing process and procedure documentation

Design and development of future state process mappings based on business requirements

"Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings."

- Niklaus Wirth

Business requirements for new products and services, particularly when those new products involve branching into areas not traditionally serviced by the company, can pose a risk to the organization. This service takes the overall business requirements for the initiative, creates a proposal and roadmap, and can potentially work the process through to successful deployment.

Product development can be complex and involve many areas of the organization, external entities such as suppliers or third-party developers, and require the creation of new organizational units. This service mitigates the risk of a complex undertaking by bringing in management talent with a long history of product development, and provides a good view up-front of the costs and efforts involved.

Services Delivered

Product or Service description

Product proposal including costs, timelines, and potential ROI

Optionally:

Product design document and development methodology

Training and documentation for sales, marketing, and operational support

Staff augmentation for gaps in capability or recruiting services

Value Proposition

Utilizing experienced management consultants with a history of successful new product and service deployments greatly increases speed to market, lowers development costs, provides visibility into the effort required, and greatly reduces the risk to the business of an unsuccessful product or endlessly extending development timelines.

Service Operation

Creation of a product description based on requirements from business executives

Analysis of corporate capability in terms of resources and services

Development of a product proposal including resources, timelines and process requirements

Recruiting of resources and/or negotiation of third party services

Development of waterfall or agile development methodology as required

Regular reporting of status to business owners

Consultation with existing company units such as marketing, sales and support

"The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves."

- Ray Kroc

A corporate standard is an established norm or requirement with respect to business systems and solutions. It is a formal document that establishes uniform methods, processes and practices. It provides a way of doing something consistently within the company that conforms with current industry best practices. Examples of a corporate standard include: employee identity management, location and system accessibility, or enterprise content management.

Services Delivered

Business requirements analysis and documentation

Industry best practices and capability review

Corporate standard document

Consultative sessions with stakeholders

Communication plan and training materials

Value Proposition

When corporate initiatives do not have corporate standards to adhere to then decisions are left to designers and/or implementation personnel and results can be unpredictable. Without standards, vendor interractions often result in the client purchasing what the vendor wants to sell rather than the client dictating the minimum acceptable standards for something.

Having a corporate standard ensures that everybody in your organization, as well as those organizations you are doing business with, are all on the same page. Everybody understands the expectations from a compliance standpoint. The overall result is a reduction in repeated meetings to discuss the same topics, solutions that do not conform to business needs and have to be changed, and arguments over what features and functionality are required.

Service Operation

Needs analysis; identifying if a corporate standard exists, if so, if the standard is current with industry best practices

Researching and understanding the current “state of the art” for the business function in question

Creation of a standard that incorporates the needs of the business combined with industry best practices

Consultative sessions with stakeholders and business owners to ensure compliance with requirements

Communication with stakeholders or “consumers” of the standard to ensure understanding and compliance.

"Plans are worthless. Planning is essential."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Project management can be particularly difficult when cross-functional project teams are involved. Oftentimes such a team composition is required to ensure a successful project from a delivery standpoint, and many business disciplines can be involved. The project manager in this case must not only be an expert at project management, but must also have general and cross-functional business experience, be skilled at conflict resolution and gaining consensus, and have experience with the agile methodology.

SERVICES DELIVERED

User stories describing project functionality

Communication plans for cross-functional teams

Scrum master coaching and facilitation as required

Team composition and sprint definitions

Current state and roadmap documentation development as required

VALUE PROPOSITION

Cross-functional teams enable organizations to have flatter structures and less rigid functional departments. As companies move more toward a more multi-directional rather than hierarchical structure it becomes more important to project success that agile project management techniques be used.

This agile-based approach to initiatives result in better decision-making throughout projects as teams have access to a much wider range of information. A more holistic and expanded scope of information and resources increases the efficiency of cross-functional teams by reducing the time required to gather information from resources not involved in the project.

Finally, by utilizing small cross-platform teams with clear short-term goals to accomplish larger enterprise initiatives, organizations can realize more interactive and iterative strategic objective development as a whole. The risk of top-down or singular goal-setting is eliminated.

SERVICE OPERATION

Working with sponsors and stakeholders to establish clear directions and goals